


Counting Games

by Tawabids



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Anon memes bring out the dark fic, Brother Feels, But really Dís is the one who got into my head, Discussion of Abortion, Fili is the best brother, Identity Issues, Kili is part orc, Other, Revenge themes, These tags are getting dark, Thorin's A+ Parenting, discussion of infanticide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-21
Packaged: 2017-12-20 14:31:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/888355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tawabids/pseuds/Tawabids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><br/>If it had been up to Dís and Thorin, they would have kept Kili's parentage a secret to the end of their days. </p><p>Fili knew what his brother was: half-breed, mixed-blood, not-dwarf, and he couldn't love him any less for it. But never in his worst nightmares had he thought the secret would come to light so soon and so brutally.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. rock-a-bye

**Author's Note:**

> I've deliberated a long time about whether to deanon from this particular fill, because it was a very grim one to write, and when I decided I wanted to tell the rest of Kili's story it only got grimmer. I will post the original fill as chapter one and the rest of the story soon.
> 
> Based on [this prompt at the kinkmeme.](http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/5346.html?thread=11896290#t11896290)

No one told Fili what happened. He saw it all, but no one told him. It was years before he put it all together.

He understood some things, of course, as he lay beneath the crushing weight of his father’s body, the smell of blood filling his nostrils. He understood that Papa had stopped moving, and what that meant. He was young, but their lives were entwined with farms and pelt-trappers and rat-chasers, and he had seen animals die. He wept, but he wept silently, because the orcs were still there and Papa had lain on top of him as he died and whispered, “Hush, hush, don’t move,” and that was the last thing he ever said to Fili.

He understood that they were hurting Mama. She had screamed, a sound full of rage, and cursed them, in such words as he had never heard his beautiful, regal mother use in her life. He thought they were killing Mama, but time went on and he could still hear her sobs. He lay still. They mustn’t find him. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to help Mama, but much more than that he didn’t want to die.

They _would_ have killed Mama. He was sure of it. But one of the hunters who had been riding with them, for safety – fat lot of good that had done – had ridden fast away as soon as he saw the orcs coming. And soon (not soon enough, but better late than never, Mama said later, as if the soup had simply gone cold from the waiting) there came two dozen men from the town carrying what weapons they had. No dwarves. There were no other dwarves in town that day, apart from Mama and Papa and Fili. 

The humans killed many of the orcs and chased the others away. Still Fili didn’t move. He was too afraid. He heard the humans calling to Mama, heard her say in a voice raked raw, “I can stand, leave me be,” and then, “Give me something, please.”

There were large feet standing in Fili’s eyeline, filthy and clad in sandals. “Poor fellow,” someone said, as a second pair of feet joined the first, and the second replied. “Her old man, you think?”

Then suddenly hands were grasping Papa’s body and lifting him away, and Fili heard a strangled cry. One of the humans yelled. “Hey! Hey, dwarf-woman! Here!”

He heard Mama scream. “Fili! Fili!” and he curled into himself, blinking against the sun, and Mama ran to him and hauled him into her arms and kissed his head, crying much more than when the orcs had been hurting her. “My baby, my baby, oh, I thought they’d killed you, oh my darling,” she sobbed. Pressed against her, Fili couldn’t see her face, only a curve of bloody lacerations on her neck, and again three or four times on her breast, her naked breast beneath the cloak the humans had given her to cover herself.

  


 

The next day, Uncle Thorin and the others came back. Fili had only faint memories of his father’s funeral, and of Thorin making himself a bed in the main room of their tiny house, the one that served for kitchen, dining and sitting in the evenings. He remembers Mama was cutting onions while Thorin sat on Papa’s chair with his hands hanging between his knees. He said he would stay as long as his sister needed.

“Needed for what?” she laughed, but there was nothing sweet in it. It wasn’t real laughter. It was like the vinegar left over when laughter has been crushed and left to sour. “What will you do, Thorin? Do you expect me to wilt without a man to chop the wood?”

“I only want to help,” Thorin said patiently.

“I’ll tell you what you can do,” Mama said, sounding gentle, but Fili knew it was the voice she used when Papa refused to take a job because he didn’t like the way a particular man had spoken to him. “You can go and find a wizard, and you ask that wizard for a spell that can let you go back to last week. You go back, you save my husband’s life, you stop four filthy orcs spilling themselves inside of me—”

“Dis, your son can hear—“

“My son already heard!” Mama slammed the knife into the chopping board, burying it an inch into the wood. “My son heard everything! Can you help that, Thorin? Can you take that back?” she tore down the collar of her dress, her bosom shining in the late-afternoon sun and the bloody scabs sitting like insects across her skin. “Can you heal this, keep their teeth from leaving scars? Is that why you’re here?”

Fili began to cry, as quietly as he could. _Hush, hush,_ Papa’s voice whispered in his ear. But it was Thorin who stood up and picked him up, Thorin’s strong arms holding him close and Thorin’s hair that tickled his nose as he pressed his face into Thorin’s shoulder. He took Fili outside, bouncing him and whispering to him that everything would be well. They just had to be patient.

Thorin stayed through all that summer until the trees turned red and then brown and their fingers stretched thin into the sky. Fili began to sleep through the night again, but sometimes he awoke in the darkness and the weight of the blankets felt like his father’s body, and he could smell blood. One of these nights he found that Mama was not lying next to him in the bed they had shared since Papa left. He climbed down onto the floor, the bare boards cold on his feet, and went to the door. Mama kept it well oiled, because sometimes she couldn’t sleep, and then she went outside during the night and didn’t come back for a long time.

Fili opened the door a little. The hearth was burning in the main room. Thorin and Mama sat on the rug in front of the fire, though there were perfectly good chairs right behind them.

“You’re sure?” Thorin asked.

Mama nodded. “I haven’t bled since before Vili died. And I’m beginning to feel a stretch in my belly.”

Thorin looked away into the flames. He put his hand on top of his sister’s and their fingers clenched together. “What should we do?” he asked at last. “Will you… does the midwife…?”

“I’ve spoken to her. She has ways,” Mama shook her head.

“I’m frightened for you, Dis. They say a dwarf running early to battle may have a better chance at life than a woman running early to the midwife.”

“I know,” Mama sighed. “That’s not all, Thorin. Suppose… suppose it isn’t theirs? Suppose… not a monster, but a little brother or sister for Fili? I would… I do want that.”

“And if it isn’t?” Thorin asked.

“Then I’ll end it myself,” Mama said softly. “A thing like that… no. It would be a mercy for it as well as for me,” her hand squeezed around Thorin’s. “Will you help me?”

“I will do anything for you,” her brother replied, and Fili shut the door and slipped back into bed. He’d understood only a little of what they said, but he knew the word ‘midwife’ and he knew ‘brother or sister’. He fell asleep smiling that night and only stirred a little when Mama came to bed, kissing his brow as she settled beside him. 

The winter bit cold and hard while Mama and Thorin worked even harder to keep the woodshed and their stomachs full. Fili did not tell them of what he had overheard, but he knew that brothers and sisters came from women, grew inside dwarrowdams like roots in the earth. He had seen human women with their skirts pushed far out like they were hiding pots under there. But Mama did not look like there was anything inside her. She looked only sick. She did not smile. Her hair grew lank, shadows hung under her eyes and her voice was thin and snappish when she spoke. Thorin began to prepare meals in the evening because Mama was too tired. Fili wondered if something had gone wrong. Babies died all the time, he knew. Perhaps the baby had gone wherever Papa had gone.

  


 

Then one day, Mama came home early and told Fili she was going to be ill tonight. She walked around and around the house, her cheeks flushed, her hands holding her back as if she had slept on tree roots. Soon Thorin returned from the town, spoke to her in hushed tones, then went away and came back with a human woman. She had grey hair tied neatly back from her face, and carried a heavy basket at her side. The sun was dying in the west, red and burning.

Fili tugged on his mother’s elbow. “I’m hungry.”

“There’s oatcakes in the pantry,” she pushed him away. “Stay out here in the kitchen. Don’t come into the bedroom, no matter what you hear.”

Fili ate an oakcake. The woman and Thorin went back and forth from the well, filling up pots and buckets of water, some of which they set on the fire. They told Fili to stay out of the way and shut the bedroom door behind them, and he sat under the table.

Sometime after that, Mama cried out, over and over. It was like when the orcs had been hurting her. Fili put his hands over his ears and felt tears on his cheeks.

_Hush, hush,_ Papa whispered, and Fili bit back his sobs.

At last he could stand it no longer. Mama was hurting and he had to help. He went to the bedroom door and opened it, the well-oiled hinge turning silently. He slipped in the gap and shut it behind him.

No one saw him, and he didn’t understand all that he saw in turn. Mama sat on the bed, naked from head to toe, with Thorin behind her, his arms wrapped around her. The human woman knelt at the end of the bed, between Mama’s legs, with a bucket of water beside her. She was speaking in a low purr. “Come on, now, dwarrowdam, come on now,” she was saying. “Make your grandmothers proud. You’re almost there.”

Mama cried out again. Thorin was whispering to her, pushing away the strands of hair that hung and caught in her mouth. Mama sobbed, “Why isn’t he here? Where’s my husband? The bastard, the bastard, how could he – how could he leave me –”

“I know,” Thorin clutched her hand. “I know, Dis.”

“I can see the wee head, lovey,” the woman said. “It’s almost over.”

And then she was standing carefully, holding something in her outstretched hands. It looked like nothing to Fili: a ball of grey rags, perhaps, trailing a twisted rope and glinting in the light of the candles. The woman’s eyes were wide and she looked up at Thorin. “It’s as you said.”

“No,” Mama wept. “No, no, no. It can’t be.”

Thorin laid her back against the pillows and took the wretched thing from the woman. It had begun to move, and for a moment the movement seemed hideous to Fili, as if a piece of dead steak had come alive on his plate. Then the shapes resolved into tiny limbs, the bulge of a head and the flutter in and out of ribs. Thorin was holding it away from his body as if it were made of nettles. “Dis,” he said. “Dis, are you sure?”

“Do it,” Mama rasped. “Do it. Don’t let me see it.”

Thorin took the wriggling thing around the bed to where the bucket stood waiting. For a moment he simply stared at it, his brow twisted and his mouth set in a hard line. Then he looked up from his burden to the door and his eyes widened as he saw Fili sitting there. Fili had his hands pressed over his mouth.

“Mr Dwarf!” the woman cried suddenly. “She needs you! The afterbirth – hold her, I must make sure – we mustn’t let it tear, hold her!”

As soon as she began to speak, Thorin jerked back to life. He crouched and laid the thing on the bare floor, rushing to his sister’s side.

The thing began to cry. Fili stood up. None of the adults turned towards the wails. They were busy with Mama. Fili went to it, tugged off his vest and carefully picked it up, mimicking the way he had seen women in town carrying their new babes. Mama was crying out in pain. No one was looking at Fili.

He slipped out the door into the other room. The baby was tiny, but he could still only just hold it with one arm while he shut the latch. It was quieter here. Fili crawled under the table and began to rock the baby. Its eyes were squeezed closed and there was a lick of black hair on its head. Its skin had a strange, grey-green tinge beneath the greasy slime that covered it all over, but inside its mouth was a clean pink. He could see that it was a boy. A brother. He was Fili’s brother. He didn’t understand what was wrong with him, why Mama would not want to see him too.

He whispered to the baby as he rocked his whole body back and forth. “Hush, hush.”

The baby’s wailing faded and he closed his tiny mouth.

Inside the bedroom, Fili heard the human woman say, “There, there, you’re finished. You can rest.”

“Is it done?” Mama asked. “Thorin?”

There was the sound of footsteps around the bed. “Where is it? I put it here!”

The door was thrown open. Thorin stood there in his sweat-drenched shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows. Mama turned her head from where she lay and they both rested their gazes on Fili.

“He’s here,” Fili said in a small voice, clutching the baby close. “I have him. He’s safe.”

Mama put her hand to her mouth. Thorin’s face was bloodless, his expression empty and unreadable. He looked at his sister, and she shook her head.

  


 

When Kili was only a few days old, Thorin took a pair of scissors, cleaned them, heated them up in the fire and did something to Kili’s ears, while Mama held him still. The baby screamed and screamed afterwards even when they bandaged his head and tried to give him rum to soothe him. His speech came late, stumbling and lisping, but Mama sat with him and made him shape his words over and over until he got them right. And when he did, she smiled at him and told him what a good boy he was, and he clapped his pudgy hands and grinned at her, his dark eyes crinkling up and his laughs turning into hiccoughs. 

As he grew taller, Kili’s greyish skin was burned brown by the sun and his hair grew thick and dark on his head, like Thorin’s. He was always thin, so thin that right into his teens, Thorin could still pick him up with one arm and swing him about. When they moved to Ered Luin other dwarrowdams shook their heads and told Mama he might have the honey-sickness, but Kili didn’t have any sickness. He was strong and he was loud and he smiled, all the time, at everyone and everything.

There was wildness too, a fidgety nature that quickly exhausted Mama and Thorin and left only Fili to keep him occupied at the end of a long day. He was quick to anger, first to start a fight, but without the rock-hard stubbornness of his uncle and brother – he was the first to flee from trouble or fear, in his early years. But Thorin patiently, slowly taught him to hold his ground. He worshipped the dust on which his uncle walked, so soon enough Fili could not get him to run away even when it was the sensible thing to do. On more than one occasion, Fili physically carried him away from a scuffle with human children, berating his idiocy the whole way.

Fili had never loved anything as much as he loved his brother.

Sometimes their play fights together got too heated, though, as brothers do together. One day they were wrestling and Fili was winning, as always, and then he felt a blinding pain in his arm. He threw Kili off and ran back to Mama, who was carrying crates into the forge.

“Mama!” he cried. “Mama, it hurts!”

His mother took hold of his arm and looked at the ring of red marks, several of them welling up with blood. “Who did this?”

“Kili. It’s Kili’s fault,” Fili blurted out, just as his brother ran up behind him. Kili was wailing too, because the game had stopped and because he hated when Fili got attention and he didn’t.

It happened so fast. Mama raised her hand, there was a crack like a hammer against a cold the anvil and Kili was flung down on the packed dirt outside the forge. The breath left Fili’s chest, his lips parting and tears drying up in shock. Mama grabbed Kili’s collar and dragged him up. She locked her fingers around Fili’s wrist and wrenched his arm close so that that it was inches from Kili’s face.

“Look what you did!” she roared. “Look what you’ve done to your brother! You must not bite, Kili! _You must never bite!_ ”

Kili swayed on his feet, real tears welling up and spilling down his cheeks. The side of his face was already going pink. He whispered, “I’m sorry,” and then sobbed it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

Fili looked up at Mama. Her features were twisting and then something broke in her expression. Her arm extended to grip the pole that supported the forge’s awning, but it didn’t seem to be enough. She sunk onto one knee, and reached out to Kili, drawing him in and wrapping him up in her arms.

“I know, my darling,” she whispered. “I know. Thank you.”

  


 

And one day, years after that, Fili would understand. He would learn a little bit about the world here and there, something of evil, something of cruelty. He would remember the weight of his father’s body and the bucket that stood at the end of the bed the night his brother was born. He would touch the shell of Kili’s ear and be batted away, but not before he felt the faint roughness of the scar there. And when his brother laughed he saw teeth that were just a little too sharp, not enough that anyone would notice, not unless they were looking for it. And it would all come together in his mind.

Kili would tilt his head and raise his eyebrows and ask, “What is it? You look like you just sat on a red-hot wire!”

_Hush, hush_. Fili would make his mouth smile. “It’s nothing.”


	2. hardstones

In the branches of a great fir, the brothers roped themselves to the trunk and waited. Hours passed. Fili’s limbs grew stiff and cold, and thirst began to swell in his throat, but at least that kept him awake. Kili did not seem to relax even for a minute. The orcs must have returned to their cave by midnight, bringing game and the treasure from some troll-hoard they had robbed, and they proceeded to feast and get drunk. They had set up only a single watchman out here in the wilds. Finally, the leaders began to emerge from the warm cave where they had been enjoying their spoils, chanting and boasting to the underlings. One orc stood prominent among them, the tallest and loudest. Even his voice made Fili nauseous. 

“There,” Fili sat up on the thin branch and reached around the trunk to shake Kili’s shoulder. “There’s the Captain! You’ve got a clear shot.”

“No,” Kili brought his bow around and slowly drew the orcish arrow from his quiver. But he did not yet nock it for his first kill, as if pausing to savour the moment that will separate his boyhood from the rest of his life. “He’s not my target.”

**  
**  


When they were very young they lived in a large village of men and Mama ran the forge. It was not a bad town for dwarves, as foreign towns go. It was a home of a sort, and they had rough-and-tumble friends among the children. But all their clothes were hand-me-downs, all the women called Mama 'Dam' instead of 'Dis', and some winters they all slept in Mama's bed because there was not enough firewood. So when there came letters from far away over the hills (from the other side of the world, it seemed!) it was only three days before Mama closed the forge, packed them up and took them to Ered Luin.

“Your uncle says everyone is going,” she explained as she refolded all of the clothes Fili had stuffed them into his bag. “Think of all the young dwarves you will have to play with. And we’ll be safe there.”

“Aren’t we safe here?” Kili asked, sitting in a circle of stones and pinecones he had collected from around the village, none of which he was allowed to take. He had been grizzling all day about leaving home. Somehow he believed they were going to go live in a bear-cave in the mountains (it was Fili's fault he believed this).

Fili was grumpy about moving too, but for a different reason. Uncle Thorin had gone some three years earlier to organise the new colony, in the ruins of the cities of the Blue Mountains. He’d come and gone throughout their childhood, but the last time he left he had said that he would not be back for years and years. On that day he knelt before Fili and told him he was the man of the house now, and he must take care of his mother and brother. It was a foolish thing to say to a boy so young, but Thorin had never been much good at seeing children as children. It had given Fili a terrible sense of entitlement, and a tendency to speak down to his mother even though she was still a foot taller than him. So right now he was angry because Mama had decided to move them to Ered Luin without even consulting him, and he was taking his anger out on his little brother. 

“No, stupid, we’re never safe,” Fili kicked out at Kili’s stones. “Papa died here, didn’t I tell you? The orcs could come and get us any day.”

“Fili!” Dis gasped. “Don’t tell him stories like that!”

Kili wasn’t worried about stories, though. “Don’t kick my trinkets!” he yowled, jumping up to push him, and they began to fight. Mama had to drag them apart and send them both to sit in different corners of the house.

It can’t have been easy, raising two boys mostly alone. There must have been days she hated Fili’s single-mindedness and the cruel insults he picked up from the human children. There must have been nights, when her feet were aching and her head was throbbing, that she could not indulge Kili’s chatter a moment longer. She had only two hands to hold onto them, and those two hands were needed at the bellows and hammers that she had worked alone since her husband had passed. Perhaps that was why she took them to Ered Luin, where there were more eyes to watch them and more hands to keep them from wandering off. Perhaps she just wanted to be among her people, people who called her by name and didn't talk over her head. Be a princess again for a while, stand by her brother, sit in on his councils and represent the wives and sisters and mothers of Ered Luin. Not nail horseshoes and beat pots into shape until her hands cracked and bled and her eyes grew red and sore from the fires.

It was not too much to ask, really, but of course she was a dwarrowdam of Durin’s line and would never sit her sons down and simply tell them that. Her kind did not believe that children should know about the sacrifices their parents made for them. Instead she punished them for fighting and growled at them until they obeyed her. 

By morning, all bad blood was forgotten. 

**  
**  


They held Kili’s naming ceremony only a few days after they reached Ered Luin. It was almost a year late, but it was considered bad luck for a son to be named without an adult male as witness. Fili had been given his secret name almost six years earlier; _Zabdâl_ , ‘he who leads’ – a royal label to mark the future his family saw for him. In their new home, with Thorin presiding, Dis gave her younger son the khuzdul name of _Dushâlzagith_.

Thorin rumbled as she finished the rite and Kili was released to chase his brother around the house, over-excited at being the centre of attention during this sacred night.

“You don’t like it?” Dis asked in knife-edge tone.

“It’s old fashioned,” Thorin said simply. “And it’s clumsy – he can’t even pronounce it. It doesn't suit him.”

“You’re not his father,” Dis spat. “You don’t know what suits him.”

**  
**  


They were unshakeable brothers but they were never perfect sons. In their teens they turned to total insolence, banding together against the tyranny of the world, the burden of their birthright, the dull lessons of dull histories in dull languages from even duller teachers. They called their mother the “Trolless” and plotted to run away to become rangers in the north. They became obsessively reverent of their late father, the magnificent Vili son of Vald, who (the story went) had forsaken his tribe and his chieftainship to marry the homeless princess of Erebor. They were sure Papa would have understood the plight of their youth, he would have understood their ambitions, he would have helped them escape. There was a good year and a half during this time when Thorin refused outright to speak to them or even visit the house. His own siblings had been raised mostly by nannies and tutors; tantrums and rebellions had always been solved by other people. Dis soldiered on alone. Finally Fili and Kili carried through with their threats and disappeared one warm, autumn night. 

Fili heard later that Dis had sat on the veranda and smoked her pipe for most of the morning. Word soon got out that no one had seen her boys since the day before and the neighbours came to ask her what she was doing.

“Enjoying the peace and quiet,” she told them. “Don’t spoil it.”

When they asked if she would like someone to tell Thorin, she cut them short, “Certainly not. He does not deserve to lend a hand. I’m done with all of them; I’m going to enjoy an early retirement by myself. Tell him that, if you must.”

In the end it was Dwalin who waded into the stalemate. He acquired Dis’ permission to go look for her sons, and found them camped in an old watchtower above the city. He sat them down and told them a story of his own.

"Your Father, may he be blessed, didn't abandon his tribe for your mother," he grumbled. "It was Dis who wanted to leave her family and join Vald’s nomads. She wanted to live a wild life sleeping in tents and hunting the great Eastern bison and forget the Longbeards and her kingly grandfather forever. But they both knew that Thorin planned to rebuild Ered Luin, and Vili believed that one day his brother-in-law would retake the Lonely Mountain. He saw treasure and security and kingship in Thorin's future, and he wanted that for his sons, not a scrappy lordship over a pack of dirty cattle-chasers. He talked Dis into staying in the west because he believed it was best for their children-not-yet-born. Now I'm not saying you owe it to him to follow his decision, but I do think you owe your mother not to be so cruel to her. The stories you think you know are never as simple as they seem when you're young. Go home to her and apologise. And if I catch either of you making trouble for her again I'll bash your bloody heads together, do you hear me?"

They nodded silently. They never apologised properly, and Dis never asked them to, but the rows stopped after that. Thorin started visiting again. He began teaching Fili himself about the lessons of kingship inherited from his own father and grandfather. Talk of rangers and runaways faded and was forgotten. 

**  
**  


Fili came of age in Ered Luin. He reached his full height and the first soft, blond hairs of his beard began to come in, carefully combed and worn with his head held high. The older dwarves still saw him as a boy, still “Dis’s lad” and not “Thorin’s heir”, but Fili knew the truth. He was a man, he was an adult, and he could easily carry the weight of his lineage and the shared grief of his people. No task was too great – if only someone would give him a way to prove it. The only measure of his greatness, however, was in comparison to Kili, still lanky and gormless, hopeless with an axe, impatient as a magpie and as bare-cheeked as a newborn. He didn’t seem to care – he mocked Fili’s mighty beard relentlessly, slacked off their history lessons, took up the bow and arrow just to make his mother sigh and shake her head. Fili knew in his heart that compared to his brother he was the better dwarf in every way, but he didn’t want Kili to know it, not really.

They had their best adventures in the Blue Mountains. They disappeared for days to hunt the wild sheep of the tundra and always returned triumphant, to their mother’s rage and relief. They stole ale from their elders and organised bonfire dances that could last through a whole summer’s night. They swam in the rivers that pooled beneath the glaciers until they felt like their bones were full of needles, and taught themselves to ride ponies through bruising trial and error. For as long as they'd lived in the mountains Thorin had arranged the most intensive training in weapons and strategy, so they were always chosen as the captains of the Ered Luin dwarflings. They led war games with the other youngsters, in the streets and ruins of the old city, sometimes fighting side by side and sometimes raising armies against each other. 

In their minds their wooden swords were the legendary blades of their ancestors and their handful of mismatched allies – boys and girls together, all in trousers and braids, for dwarves come late into what they call ‘a marriageable mindset’ – were the heroes of old. Sometimes they even re-enacted famous battles to see if they could sway the outcome one way or the other. It was during one of these games, in which Fili was portraying Uncle Thorin and Kili was playing the part of Azog the Orc-Chieftan, that Fili broke his brother’s arm with a zealous strike of his ash-wood axe. One moment all Fili could see was the bloody slopes of Azanulbizar, and the pale orc bearing down on him with sharp teeth and a roar of fury, raising his spiked club to meet Fili’s blow. And then came a faint _crack_ and the fantasy was snatched away as Kili dropped to his knees, suddenly silent and white-faced.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Fili begged, clutching Kili’s shoulders. The other youths clustered around, shoving their neighbours to get a better view. Upon seeing his commander reduced to tears and clutching his elbow tight to his chest, one of the youngest – it was probably Ori – even had to sit down and take several deep breaths. Somebody asked frantically whether Kili was dying, and was smacked on the back of the head by their neighbour.

The game was not resumed that day (which was a pity, because everyone agreed that up until the injury, it had been the best battle of the season) and Kili walked home unaided but with cheeks like chalk, with Fili by his side and a parade of their fellow warriors trailing behind. When they reached home at last Dis boxed Fili’s ears and called a physician. 

Dwarf bones were hard as diamond, strong as steel, that’s what everyone said. The physician refused to believe at first that the arm really was broken. “Unheard of,” he scoffed, poking and prodding the bruise while Kili sat on his mother’s bed and made muffled howls through his closed lips. “Not from a wee blow with a wooden stick, not at his age.”

At that moment Kili finally fainted backwards onto the bed. Dis shrieked his name. After a few frantic moments she managed to rouse him, but his face was still very green. The physician agreed at last that delayed shock was, at the least, an undeniable sign of a serious fracture. He set and splinted the arm and gave Kili willow-bark to chew. He warned Dis that the boy's bones must be fragile, a sure sign of a deficiency in his diet, and that he needed more meat and fish or the brittleness might get worse. 

Dis lost her temper at this stage, grabbed the old dwarf by his collar and threw him out of her house. She later refused to pay more than half his fee. He had, she said, neglected the diagnosis and insulted her with his accusation that she was not feeding her child properly. 

Kili was confined to bed for three days, barred from physical activity for the rest of summer and wore a sling for half of that year, though he frequently shirked it to practice his archery no matter how bad the break still hurt. When the war games resumed the other youths gave Fili enormous reverence for the strength of his blow, heavy enough to break bones, but Fili wanted none of it. He felt sick thinking about the crack of his brother’s arm and perturbed by the question that had echoed after it, ‘ _how?_ ’ Kili was healthy and strong as anyone else his age. He wanted for nothing. How could his arm have broken so easily? 

It mixed with other questions Fili had asked in the silence of his own skull, questions about his faint memories of Kili's birth, and of the day their father died. The _how_ stayed hiding in his mind for months. It chewed at his heart. He felt as if he was bleeding from a wound he could not staunch. He would not looked at it, would not touch it or suture it. He feared infection. He feared that if he faced the truth, the wound would open wider and wider until it tore him away from his mother and brother.

But the truth had always been there. He had always known. One day he looked at Kili over the laden lunch table and he found that the truth was simply a part of the scenery, as ordinary as his mother’s scars from burns in the forge. His brother was arguing with Dis about some silly matter, something about a party that night and when they were expected home. Thorin sat beside him, and while Kili was distracted he broke a piece of bread and dipped it into Kili’s soup. Balin was visiting too that day, and he chuckled as Thorin did it second time. Kili realised at last and threw his arm down between his uncle and his food, making a great show of cursing the theft. Each ingredient in the scene was absorbed by Fili without distress – the steaming bowl, his mother laughing, Balin’s beard quivering, the worn varnish of the old kitchen table, and Kili his brother, Kili with his scarred ears and his too-sharp smile and his bones that broke from the blow of a wooden stick. _How?_ No answer was needed. It was as it was. 

So Fili never asked Mama _how_. He knew where children came from and he knew marriage and love were not necessary. He didn’t ask about the bucket at the end of the bed. He didn’t say anything to anyone, but he never again thought of himself as the better dwarf between him and his brother. 

It was no longer a fair competition. 

**  
**  


The new colony had begun to expand its crafts in those years. The mines in the Blue Mountains were old and abandoned by the time Thorin led his people back there, and the Erebor refugees did not have the wealth or labour to dig deeper for ore, nor to support mines in the colder, more treacherous valleys. Instead Thorin sent surveyors out across the northern wilds, looking for rich pickings close to the surface.

In the forests and hills west of the dreaded Ettenmoors, the gamble begun to pay off. The rivers that wound through those lands were rich with deposits of jade and other hardstones, so abundant in some places that they could be lifted from sandbanks already luminescent, birthed and polished by the freezing waters. Soon the Ered Luin gem trade was making the city prosperous at last, enough that families no longer went hungry in winter, enough to build new rows of homes and civil halls of healing and learning. For the first time since Erebor, the dwarves forged a crown from their own hard-won gold and mithril, and called their leader a king where before Thorin had been eternally a prince. 

Thorin accepted the title but rarely wore the crown, showing little joy in his people's prosperity, and never grew complacent. The source of their new wealth had to be carefully protected. He barred permanent settlements in the North, ensuring the gem-miners shifted their camps with the seasons and returned to the safety of Ered Luin during the bitter winter months. He also arranged phalanxes of seasoned guardsmen, for the area was lousy with orc bands and troll nests. 

Dis had been a skilled gem surveyor in her childhood, during the hard years after the dragon drove them out. There had been so little to eat at that time that all the treasures saved from the fire had been hawked, and the royal family had lived and slept beside their people without anything to distinguish them but the occasional bowed head from traditionalists. Clad in rags like any other child, bereft of supervision and with no one to teach her the lessons of a princess, Dis had learned rock-lore and earth-reading at the knees of old miners. That generation of Erebor miners were finally dying or retiring and they did not have enough grown sons and adopted apprentices to keep up with the demand. Dis stepped in and asked to go north with the next team. 

Unfortunately for her nerves there was no way she could keep her sons from accompanying her. Now in their fifties, they were both of age and well-educated in the skills of warriors. They had never seen real battle, but they would be standing beside others who had – Dwalin himself was the Captain of the guardsmen on Dis' team – and attacks by orcs had so far been extremely rare and opportunistic, easy to push back. Besides all that, Dis and Thorin had both noticed that Fili was finally coming into a marriageable mindset. Perhaps it would be best to keep them busy in an all-male company for another season. So that spring, Fili and Kili marched out with the rest of the mining party. 

"I will serve you well, Thorin," Fili promised. He had a few minutes to farewell his uncle alone, as they stood in the stables with Kili loading up their ponies. "I will make my first kill this year, I know it. I'll slice the head off a goblin chief and send his lackeys running from the name of Durin!"

"Don't go looking for fights. Have patience, or you'll get yourself and your brother killed," Thorin warned, gripping the back of Fili's neck with both hands. "If you come home and I learn you've worried your mother in any way, I will be disappointed in you, Fili."

"But I'm ready! I'm not a boy!" Fili protested.

"Aye, but only boys collect their kills like trophies. A warrior kills for a purpose greater than pride or glory," Thorin kissed his forehead and clapped him on the shoulder. "And I trust you to know your purpose, nephew."

**  
**  


For two months the camp sifted for gems in the foothills of Carn Dûm. The days were chilly but growing warmer and longer, and though uneventful, there was plenty of scouting, hunting and guardsmen drills to keep the boys occupied. It was on a regular scouting trip that they found the orcs, and the orcs found them. 

They were supposed to go in threes, encircling the forest all around the open mines to look for anything untoward. But that day there was only the two of them. With the recent delivery of supplies from the Blue Mountains, their senior scouter had received a letter from home to say his wife had given birth to their first daughter. The ale had flowed a bit too freely in his tent that night. When Fili came to rouse the scouter for his shift, he was woozy, bloody-eyed and stank of vomit, and he begged Fili not to tell anyone he was neglecting his duty. Fili promised they would keep quiet and congratulated him on his new child. He and Kili went out alone. 

It was a warm day considering how far north the camp lay. The cicada songs were loud as a drumming band and the sky was cloudless. Fit and eager without anyone to steady their pace, they were halfway through the usual route before noon. Rather than get back to camp and risk being accused of cutting corners, the boys decided to cut further into the rocky valleys for thrill of exploration. The scrub had given way to tall pine forest, and the aroma of sap grew stronger as they climbed over old slips and up steep banks, then down into dusty gullies spanned by old, fallen trees. It was in one of these gullies where the orcs had laid down for their sleep, tucked into the hollows and overhangs of the rocks like birds in a cliff. But they had two fellows on watch. By the time the brothers realised they had stumbled right into the middle of the camp, the watchmen were hollering and banging their swords to wake the whole band.

So much for being a warrior. So much for his first kill. Fili did not even get his sword out of its sheath before he was seized, and Kili had an arrow drawn but no time to nock it, only managing to plunge it towards the orc reaching for him with its long arms. It skidded across the orc's armour with a shower of sparks and left a long, shallow cut along its ribs. The orc howled and Fili twisted in his captor's grasp just in time to see a grey-skinned fist collide with his brother's face, knocking him to the ground. In a moment, three more orcs had Kili pinned face-down and bound his arms behind his back with tight ropes. 

Fili couldn’t get free. He was fighting as hard as he could, he felt like by _rights_ , by all that was fair and good, he should have been able to fight them off. But the hands that held him were strong as iron and more orcs were awakening from the gully’s shadows. They roped his hands behind him and laughed as they pushed him to his knees. He heard his brother shouting his name and then the crunch of flesh-on-flesh again and Kili fell silent.

The tallest and best-groomed of the lot was striding towards him. Fili strained against the bonds, his braids flying, spit oozing between his teeth. He had to get out. He had to get Kili out. Idiot! Why had they left the perimeter? Why had they gone exploring alone? He had got them both _killed!_

The leader hunched over, propping his hands on his knees. Without a shred of unease, his eyes half-hooded, he tilted his head and surveyed Fili.

“ _Ufûrz tith_ ,” the leader sneered, and then switched to jaggedly-accented Westron. “Look at him, shaking like an animal in a snare.”

The orc at his right rubbed his hands together, “They wandered into the wolves’ den by accident I think, Captain.”

Fili stopped struggling, and the Captain laughed. His cheeks burned red. He tried to think how Thorin would behave in so humiliating a situation, but all he knew was that Thorin would never have got himself into this mess.

“I know you,” the Captain tilted his head, his gaze flicking across Fili’s face. “Where would I have met a little _snaga_ like you before, hmm?”

Fili did the only thing he could do while he was being held on his knees and spat at the Captain’s feet. “I think I’d remember a face like yours.”

The Captain didn’t even acknowledge his disdain. He was looking at him with narrowed eyes. For several long moments, Fili could hear only his own laboured breathing and the whispers of the orcs in their own language. Then the Captain spoke again. “You’re just a babe out of the cradle. Where are your kin, hmm?” he leaned in even closer, his foul breath blowing into Fili’s nose. “Tell me the truth, and I’ll let you both go on your way.”

“Far away,” Fili said, leaning away from the stench. “We’re hunting. We’ve been on the road for days.”

“Hunting?” the Captain took Fili’s sword from the nearest orc and waved it in front of his face, brushing the flat of the blade briefly against his cheek. “With this? You kill a lot of squirrels with this, you lying filth?”

“I’m telling you the truth,” Fili said, trying to keep his voice even though everything inside of him was wrung-out and heaving. “We’re trappers. We thought the game would be better up here.”

He was determined not to show fear. He was a son of Durin’s line. He would get them out of this.

“In the middle of orc country?” the Captain grabbed his chin, digging his nails into Fili’s cheeks. “I’ve never heard of dwarves _that_ stupid,” he looked over Fili’s shoulder and jerked his head at one of his subordinates, barking an order in his own tongue. Fili had not thought his heart rate could rise any further, but it did as he heard the whip of a thrown rope, and one of the orcs laughing.

“You’re going to tell me where the rest of your warren is camped and why they’re here, you miserable little beast, and you’re going to do it in,” he grinned, “I’d say about two or three minutes. That’s the usual time.”

He took hold of Fili’s shoulders and twisted him around, locking his arm around his neck. In the same moment, one of the orcs holding Kili slipped a crudely-knotted noose over his head and three others hauled the rope tight over a tree branch that leaned over the canyon far above. Fili heard himself bellow as Kili was lifted off his feet, his back arching around his bound hands and his legs kicking out a full yard above the ground. The orcs were laughing, cheering, as Fili’s brother began to choke. 

“Stop! _Stop!_ I’ll tell you!” Fili croaked. “Let him down— bring him down!”

The orc hissed in his ear. “You’ll tell me now. Talk fast.”

“We’re a mining camp, we sift hardstones, we’re miners!” Fili heard a sob enter his voice. The blood was pooling in Kili’s face, his expression wracked with terror. The three orcs holding the rope had to brace their feet, their heels digging into the dirt, as the rope jerked and jumped in their hands. Fili writhed in the orc’s hold, trying to get enough leverage on the dusty earth to buck his captor off.

The orc dug his talons into Fili’s scalp. “Where’s your camp? _Hiis, pushdug!_ ”

“South – I don’t know – I can show you – _please!_ ”

“What if I don’t believe you?” the orc smoothed down the hair he’d disturbed, his fingers gentle now. Kili’s struggles were growing weaker. Fili heard himself groan in despair as he realised that he could betray everything he knew about the mining camp and they would still kill his brother. The Captain let out a long sigh in his ear. “What can you possibly tell me, yes, that you think is worth my time?”

Fili’s mind skidded across pleading words, of telling the orc who their Uncle was, promises of ransom, of giving anything, anything at all to save his brother’s life. Instinct told him the Captain didn’t care, was clever and cautious, concerned only with eliminating threats. He would rather bury them both in secret graves than show his face to a well-armed camp of dwarves. Fili’s offers scattered from his throat. He said the only thing that broke through his panic, the one thing that maybe, maybe would hold the orc’s interest long enough to keep Kili alive.

“He’s one of you!” he screamed. “His father was an orc – he’s your kin – you’re killing your own kin!”

Wide-eyed faces turned from watching the spectacle of Kili’s twitching body. A mutter in the black speech ran through them, and the Captain released Fili’s neck and twisted him around, holding him up by his collar. “Say that again!”

“His father was an orc who raped my mother,” Fili said numbly. The words came so easily to his tongue. He’d thought them over and over again through the years, trying to find a kinder way to say it, preparing for the dreaded day that he would have to speak the truth. Never in his worst nightmares had he thought it would come so soon and so brutally.

The Captain gazed into his eyes, lips tugging back from his teeth. Fili looked back at him without wavering. “I swear it,” he rasped. “I swear it on my life.”

The Captain raised his head and roared at one of the lesser orcs. Fili struggled to look around. The orcs holding the rope released it and Kili fell like a stone, crumpling onto his side as he hit the ground. The creature who’d taken the Captain’s command dashed over and loosened the noose, dragging it roughly off his neck. Kili didn’t even flinch. His back was turned towards the crowd. A faint ringing grew inside Fili’s skull.

“Is he dead?” the Captain snapped.

The orc took hold of Kili’s coat and lifted him, shaking him roughly. He hung limp from the creature’s grasp, his head tipped back and his eyes closed. His face was a swollen, purplish-red and there was a red ring already beginning to bruise around his neck. Then the orc backhanded him across the mouth. His whole body jerked like a fish on a line and he began to struggle.

At the sight, Fili’s heart began to beat again. He exhaled in a rush, his vision blurring. Time. They had time. Maybe only a few more minutes, but it was better than before.

“Ha! I know where I’ve seen your face,” the Captain threw Fili down onto the dusty earth. He rolled onto his back just as an iron-tipped boot was pressed onto his chest, crushing his hands underneath him. He swallowed, not understanding the creature’s words. He’d never seen an orc before today – well, not since he was very, very small. He couldn’t believe the creature leering down at him would recognise him from so long ago.

The Captain broke into a twisted grin. He crouched, still pinning Fili beneath him, and reached towards Fili’s face. Fili strained away from him, but he merely took hold of one of the braids behind his ear and pulled it taut, slicing it off with Fili’s own sword. He raised the hair to his eyes, and let out a thin laugh.

“My first kill,” he crooned, looking down at Fili. “I was just a babe like you, I was, when I opened that dwarf from navel to breast and watched the life leave him. I shore a braid from him, just like this,” he waved the lock of Fili’s hair, spreading his arms to garner the cheers of his fellows. “I’d never seen hair that colour on a dwarf, and never again until now.”

Fili felt ice creep through his blood into his heart. No. It wasn’t possible. The Captain smirked down at him. He brought Fili’s sword around to Fili’s throat and forced him to tip his head back. 

“Did you know him, _snaga_?” he said. “Fifty years ago, it must have been – was he a brother? Or maybe…” He pressed the tip of the sword into the skin beneath Fili’s chin. “He had a wife, I remember now. She made a lot of stupid noises. Not for me, you understand. I was far down the ranks back then,” his eyes slid away across the ground towards where Kili lay coughing. “Perhaps you’re not a liar after all, filth.”

Killer. _The_ killer, the only one that had ever mattered.

Fili could barely hear him above the ringing in his ears. He had never felt hate such as he felt for the monster that stood above him. He hadn’t known that hate like this could exist. His muscles were trembling with it, his mouth growing dry. For the first time in a very long time, he glimpsed the shape of Papa in his memory, his face turned away and forgotten during the long years since Fili had last seen him. For Fili, all that was wrong in the world, all that had been stolen from his family and all the pain they had ever suffered – Mama’s toiling to keep them fed, his father’s absence at his naming ceremony, even the biting winds in Ered Luin and the sacking of Erebor by Smaug – it all boiled down to Papa’s death. Impossible or not, it felt like the cause of all grief and loss in Fili’s life.

If the sword had been in Fili’s hands, he would have thrown himself on the orc Captain and hacked and hacked at his neck and face and gut, no matter how many hands try to stop him or how many arrows they filled him with. Even if they’d threatened his brother, it could not have stopped Fili if he’d had the sword in that moment. 

The Captain finally lifted his boot from Fili’s chest. Fili followed him with his gaze as he turned to his company and pointed down the gully. He snarled an order at the smallest orcs nearby.

“Run fast. Fetch Uncle. He’ll get to the bottom of this.”


	3. balaak

They sat the brothers together back to back. The sun beat down on them abysmally, sheltered in the gully without even a breeze. The orcs had mostly retired to the shadows, some even dozing, but there were always at least a handful keeping close watch on the dwarves. Fili thought it must have been more than half an hour since the Captain had sent off his runner. Kili had seemed only semi-conscious for much of it, but soon he tangled his fingers with Fili’s, hissing over his shoulder.

“Fili? Are you hurt?”

“Me? I’m not the one who was garrotted,” Fili whispered back, relieved beyond measure to hear his brother speak.

“I don’t understand,” Kili rasped, his voice barely louder than a breath. “What did you tell them to make them let me down?”

Fili’s stomach turned. There was no point in hiding it any longer, not when a whole party of orcs around them would soon be talking about it. “I told them… I told them your father was an orc,” he whispered.

After a moment, he felt Kili’s shoulders begin to shake. Fili twisted around as far as he dared, wishing he had his arms free so he could comfort him. But when he glimpsed Kili’s face out of the corner of his eye, he realised his brother was laughing, silently through his tortured throat. “You’re cleverer than I ever thought, brother,” he shot him a grin. “Brilliant, even. A half-orc! I can play that role easy enough – I’m sure Mama would agree.”

The nausea bubbled and then settled. Fili began to turn his mind to more practical matters. He murmured out of the corner of his mouth, “These knots are loose. Give me ten more minutes and I’ll be out. How about yours?”

“I’ll do my best.”

“ _Shar!_ Stay silent!” an orc nearby snatched up a stone and hurled it at them, cracking Fili on the shoulder as he tried to brace himself. He gritted his teeth and focused on the ropes around his wrists. 

"Uncle is coming," suddenly the cry was passed up the gully and the sleeping orcs raised their heads. "Uncle is here!"

The creature who laboured up the slope was old. Fili hadn't thought that orcs could get old, certainly never as old as this. He was bald but for a ring of white fuzz around the crown of his head, and the smooth dome of his grey-skinned skull was mottled with spots and scabs. He walked with the aid of an iron-tipped cane. His face seemed to have shrunk its features inwards towards his squashed nose, his upper lip tugged up by an old scar into a permanent sneer that showed his sharp, yellow teeth. Around his neck was a pale, filthy bow of bone on a silver circlet. Fili realised it was a jawbone, smaller than a human's and too thick to be an elf's. A cluster of young orcs surrounded him, hustling a path for him through the crowd, for he was much shorter and wider than any of them, his jowls jiggling with every heavy step. It was not a physique of pure idleness, though – beneath his loose tunic, his old arms were still fat with muscle, and his torso was more stocky than pot-bellied. No doubt he could still make good use of the small, spiked club that hung from his belt. Even the Captain, almost two feet taller, bowed his head in deference.

He dug the point of his cane deep into the ground when he finally stopped in the centre of the camp. His voice boomed and echoed around the gully. "Well? Where's the scum who claims kinship to us? Hmm?"

The dwarves were only twenty feet ahead on an open patch of the camp, so perhaps his eyes were bad. More likely, Fili thought, he was used to having everything hand delivered to him.

"It's this one, honoured Uncle," the Captain seized Kili by a handful of hair and forced him to his feet, shoving him back onto his knees in front of the old orc. Fili flinched to lose contact with his brother so suddenly. "It hasn't spoken, but its littermate seems convinced. I think the other one is a whelp from the caravan we slaughtered years ago, when you took me on our first raiding party, Uncle. You remember, there was a dwarf-woman whose _pulsha_ we killed—”

"Yes, I remember," the old orc bent his back to peer into Kili's face. "So, you little wad-stain, how old are you? And don't lie. I always know when children are lying."

For a moment there was a dead silence. Uncle looked over Kili's head and nodded at someone, and the next moment a boot smashed into Fili's ribs, sending him sprawling on his side. He hadn't seen it coming and he grunted in pain and then bit his lip. It was too late – Kili had heard him, and he cleared his bruised throat and spoke. "Fifty-three."

"And you flopped out of the same eager cunt my troops jammed ourselves inside, did you?"

Fili's vision darkened at the edges and the blood pounded in his ears. No one spoke about his mother like that. He snarled and tried to get up, but one of the orcs kicked him again before another shoved him down and sat on his back, gripping his neck. 

Kili hadn't moved. He held Uncle's gaze, his shoulders hunched. The old orc crouched down so they were face-to-face, clutching his staff for balance. He tilted his head at Kili, speaking softly. "I was raised by a lonely mother too, you know. She was a sour stink of a creature but she beat good lessons into me. Survival first. Loyalty second. You want to survive?”

“My father was a dwarf of the Stonefoots,” Kili croaked. “He died before I was born.”

“Maybe,” Uncle straightened up. Without warning he lunged forward and took hold of Kili’s face, forcing his head back and prying his jaw open as the Captain stepped in and grabbed his shoulders to hold him still. Kili twisted his shoulders and tried to shake the orc’s filthy hands off him, but the Captain held tight. At last Uncle released him, letting his teeth snap closed around empty air.

Uncle chuckled, a low, cruel sound. He raised his voice. “Not a half-breed. We all know what a _balaak_ looks like, don’t we, lads?” He spread his arms, and the orcs around him jeered and laughed at some unexplained joke. “Dwarves know too! They’d have killed him at birth if he was _balaak_ ,” he turned on the spot and settled his gaze on Kili again. “Wasteful scum, dwarves. Don’t know a good thing until you force it into them, do they?”

Fili felt his bile rise in his throat, so shocked he barely heard the insult this time. Could it be true? Could Kili be his father’s son after all?

Uncle dug his long-nailed fingers into Kili’s hair, pushing his fringe back from his face. He crouched down again, gripping his staff for balance and clenching his hand into a fist to hold the lad’s head in place and he leaned in. For a moment Fili thought he was going to bite him. How dare the filth touch his brother, how dare he, Fili would hurt him— but he wasn’t biting Kili. He was talking to him, too low for Fili to hear from across the camp, with the clamour of the excited crowd. After a moment he heaved his bulk to his feet. The gang fell silent as they waited for Uncle to speak.

“Maybe he thinks he’s one of us, though,” Uncle cried. “Maybe he wants to prove himself.” He raised one knotted hand from his walking stick, a grin spreading on his face. "It's only fair, isn't it lads? Perhaps he has a solid, black heart in him. Shall we see?"

The cheer this raised was deafening. The gully echoed like the inside of a drum. Fili felt hands on his shoulders and arms, claws knotted in his hair, heaving him to his feet. He didn't understand what was happening until they cut Kili's bonds and shoved a long, black scimitar into his shaking hands. The orcs had formed a rough circle, leaning forward and pumping their fists or flinging obscene gestures in Fili's direction. 

Uncle propped himself in his cane, brushing the hair away from Kili's ear. He was only a couple of inches taller than the dwarf. Kili flinched away but Uncle dug his claws into his neck and held him in place. He spoke at a stage whisper so that they could all hear, "You want to live, my boy? Show us your spine. Run your mother's _real _son through his belly and you can go free."__

"I won't," Kili said through gritted teeth, but his fingers were flexing around the handle of the hooked sword. Fili felt sweat begin to drip down the side of his face. What if they were telling the truth? What if they really would let his brother go? And all Fili had to do was die. 

He didn't want to die. Not like his father, not bleeding out on the dust without purpose, stuck through with a rusty blade because some orc thought it was funny. He felt his chest heave in and out and the whole world seemed to pulse with it. And Papa's killer was right there, laughing with all the others. Fili gritted his teeth. Papa had saved Fili as he died, so Fili could grow strong and seek vengeance, he was sure of that now. Fili might save Kili with his death and then his brother would carry it on, return stronger than ever and make them pay, make them pay a hundred times over for their crimes. 

_Do it, _he thought, mouthing the words to Kili. _Do it. Live.___

"Do it!" one of the orcs holding Fili yelled, pushing Fili forward. "Gut him!" 

Kili's head was hanging low, the sword tip drooping to touch the ground. "No, no…"

"It'll be worse for him if you don't," the Captain snarled, swiping the air impatiently. "Won't it, boys? Won't we make it worse?"

There were howls and cheers. 

"We'll skin him!"

"Beat him!"

"Snap every bone in his body!" 

Kili swung his head from side to side, his jaw clenched. The orcs began to chant, and finally Kili squeezed his eyes shut and then raised the scimitar. "I'll do it! I'll do it. But not with this," he threw the sword down into the yellow dust. "Give me back my bow."

There was a roar and a gleeful stamping and shouting. Bile rose in Fili's throat. Uncle narrowed his eyes, looking at Kili for a long time before he nodded and crooked his fingers at the orc who had taken Kili's weapons. The creature whined but let them go. The bow and a single arrow from the quiver were passed from hand to hand until they reached Kili. 

Fili was dragged backwards and shoved up against the wall of the gully, his chin slapped to make him raise his head. A ringing had filled his ears and he couldn't breathe. He pressed his back into the packed clay, wishing he could sink into it and vanish. _He didn’t want to die_. Maybe someone would have worried about them by now. Maybe Dwalin and the rest of the guards were creeping up on the camp to ambush the orcs at this very moment. Somebody would come. Somebody would stop this. 

Kili took some time to tie his hair back from his face. He was less than thirty feet away, with a corridor of orcs hemming him in on either side, placing wages with each other and egging him on in the cutting words of their own language. He kicked at the dirt as he nocked the arrow. Fili watched him take a couple of deep breaths. He kept making eye contact with Fili, his brow wrinkled and his mouth a hard, warped line. 

"I want you to do this," Fili called, wishing his voice didn’t sound so plaintive. The ropes binding his hands behind his back were loose now. He was sure he could shake them off. He could easily throw himself to one side before Kili fired. But to what end? Neither of them had a chance that way. 

"Shut up," said Kili hoarsely. He raised the bow. "Shut your eyes, you son of a trolless."

Fili bit his lip and closed his eyes. The world was black and filled with chanting orcs now, but in the same moment he thought of the last time Kili had called Mama a trolless: when they had fought her and Thorin together, the two of them against the world. What did Kili mean, saying it now? Was he trying to tell him something? 

Fili heard the string release a moment before he felt the impact against his head and a sharp pain. He gasped and opened his eyes. The shaft of the arrow reared outwards in his periphery. It was buried in the wall less than an inch from his temple, and had pulled a few hairs out of his scalp. 

A groan rose from the crowd. "You coward!" someone yelled. 

"I missed!" Kili turned to them with his teeth bared. "I missed! Give me another arrow. I want to live!" he slapped his chest. 

There were boos and howls. Fili felt so afraid he didn't think he could stand upright minute longer. What was Kili doing? Playing for time? Or had he really missed, had Fili just felt the thin, stinging slice of a brother turning on a brother? 

Uncle raised his hand for silence. "Give him another arrow."

They were starting again. Fili wanted to throw up. He couldn’t stand much more of this. Kili should hurry up and just end it. 

The orcs were pushed in close around Kili this time, looking down the shaft as he raised and pulled back the string. There was a hush and they could all hear the whisper as the arrow released – but at the last moment the bow twitched and the shot went far wide, hitting high and directly above Fili's head. Fili's legs almost gave out. His heart was racing so fast he could no longer distinguish one beat from the next. He was pretty sure his last act in life was going to be throwing up in fear. 

"You pushed me!" Kili spun and actually shoved the orc standing right behind him. There was a burst of complaints from all around, hands going to knives, the accused orc yelping his denial. Kili made a threatening gesture at him, and then turned and made one at Fili too. Except it – it didn't look like any rude signal Fili had ever seen. It looked like _iglishmêk_. He tried to remember his old lessons – climb? Was that what he'd said? Fili must be mistaken, what did that mean? 

"That wasn't fair. Give me another chance," Kili snarled, directing it towards Uncle. Fili and the crowd held their breath. Uncle looked at a small orc beside him and grabbed a black-flighted arrow from the creature's quiver. 

And the word clicked into place. Fili wriggled his hands out of the ropes and while the orcs were watching Uncle he wasted not a moment. He turned towards the cliff of the gully, where Kili's two arrows formed two weak, precious handholds, and he scrabbled up the wall like he was home climbing trees to get pigeon eggs. 

Almost immediately there came a roar of warning. Fili had already dug a boot into a hollow in the gully wall and was heaving himself up, getting his foot onto the first arrow before he looked over his shoulder. He heard Kili yelling and saw his brother backing towards the cliff, the third arrow nocked and ready. The orcs at the front paused, drawing their weapons but not ready to throw themselves on an armed archer quite yet. Fili reached the second arrow and felt it crumbling out of the clay as soon as it took his weight, but he was already in reach of the roots hanging over the lip of the gully, and from there safety. In a moment he was heaving himself onto the grass and twisting around. 

Kili was at the first arrow and reaching for the second. The orcs beneath were a sea of black limbs and gnashing teeth. Fili threw his arm out, stretching for him. Kili grabbed hold of the second handhold and surged upwards. Their hands met and clasped as the arrow gave way with a spurt of cracked clay. Fili grunted as found his shoulder joint jerked with his brother's whole weight. Kili's feet scrabbled against the vertical wall and Fili grabbed a handful of the nearest shrub to keep himself from slipping forward. Kili's wrist was slipping through his sweaty palm. 

"Hold on!" Fili bellowed, and Kili clung to his arm with both hands. In one of them he still had the orcish arrow. Fili dragged on the shrub as hard as he could. Twigs were snapping in his grip and the orcs had pulled out hooked swords and spears and were stabbing towards Kili's flailing feet; two arrows and then a third skimmed off the cliff on either side of him. And then he must have got a grip on a notch in the cliff because between them they managed to haul him half up onto the slope. 

The last thing Fili saw as he looked back down at the cluttered orcs was the Captain, his mouth hanging open in a roar of rage. The orc drew his finger across his throat. Fili felt a flash of red hate but running was all that mattered anyway, at that moment. 

But a part of him was still back in the gully. He’d come back. He’d kill him. He’d kill the monster who’d taken his father.  
 **  
**  
  
They kept running long past the point where Fili’s lungs burned and his legs had turned to liquid. They ran through the forest and across the grassy tarn-country and over the rocks to the plains, not speaking because they couldn’t spare the air to do so. The sun was hanging low in the branches of the windswept trees when they finally reached the river and started upstream to the mining camp.

“Kili, slow down,” Fili gasped, clutching his ribs. Everything hurt, from the bruises on his face to the rope-burns on his wrists to the fatigue chewing at his muscles. “Hey, let me rest! Your old brother is exhausted.”

“My old brother has gotten fat on wild pig,” Kili came back a few steps and threw his arm around Fili. “We’re almost there.”

The landscape was well familiar now, and they could smell the smoke of the campfires. The riverbanks rose to tall cliffs of grey stone in mimicry of the distant mountains. The green, knee-length burrs turned into stony beaches as they came around the bend of the river. Kili hurried on a few steps ahead.

And then he stopped, as if he had encountered a solid wall that Fili couldn’t see. He stood for a moment, and then shrunk down onto one knee on the stones, bowing his head. Fili suddenly wondered if there was something he’d missed – an arrow that had silently met its mark without his noticing, that had been bleeding out for hours now. A new burst of fear sent him running to Kili’s side.

“Are you hurt?” 

Kili’s shoulders shuddered, and when Fili grabbed him he slumped against him. His hand came up and gripped Fili’s collar. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he whispered, his eyes wide as he stared towards the camp. “How could you never tell me who my father was?”

“What are you talking about?” Fili clutched him close, kissing the side of his head. “You heard that old filth! You’re not a half-breed, you’re not theirs, you’re a dwarf. It was a lie, Kili, it was a stupid lie—”

“No, _I’m_ not the half-breed,” Kili was as tense as if someone had stuck him with a knife, his knuckles showing white against his skin. “Don’t you see?”

“See what?” Fili still didn’t understand. He rubbed Kili’s shoulder as if to warm him. He thought it was the shock of their capture, a fit of panic that had thankfully been delayed until they were almost home safe. “See my foolish brother making a fuss about nothing?”

“He told me,” Kili’s voice cracked. “He told me the truth. He said he – that he knew my father. He told me my grandmother was an orc and my grandfather was a black-haired dwarf who slit her throat and left her to die after… after he…”

He let out a sob and pressed his face against Fili’s chest. Fili barely felt it. His limbs were growing numb and cold. He shook his head. He voice seemed to whine with a will of its own. “It’s not true. It’s not. Why would you believe that bastard over me?”

Kili raised his head and suddenly began to struggle, shoving Fili away. He raised his arm when Fili tried to grab him again, his mouth hanging open and his brow twisted. “You knew! You told them in the first place! Does everyone know?”

“No,” Fili begged. “No, no, no one even told _me_. Thorin and Mama, after Papa died they always pretended… and I was just a baby, they think I don’t remember… I never knew for sure, Kili, it was all so long ago,” he took a step towards him and Kili matched it, stumbling backwards. Fili held out his arms. “You’re my brother. You’ll always be my brother. I’ve never thought of you as anything less.”

“Only because I can pass as one of you!” Kili howled, tears glinting in his eyes and spit flying from his mouth. “If I looked half like an orc – like a _balaak_ – nothing would be the same!”

Before Fili could find the words to deny this, they were interrupted by a shout from upriver. The night’s watch had spotted them against the pale stones and recognised their voices. Within moments, word of their return had reached the main camp and more dwarves were gathering. Kili’s expression turned blank and he allowed Fili to hurry him along to the guards’ fire where Dwalin was hailing them. 

He gave them both an earful as he hauled them back to the sprawling, leather-walled tents at the centre of the camp. Mama was standing by the central fire, putting her maps aside as she watched them come closer. Fili expected her to join in Dwalin’s scolding, but at first she didn’t speak at all. The wind was picking up again and a fresh gust swept around her, her body rigid as a column as her skirts billowed against her legs. Her arms hung by her sides until her sons were within reach. 

Dwalin was still rumbling. “I’ll have them both digging latrines all night, Dis, such behaviour is intolerable—”

“Be quiet. They’re mine to deal with,” Mama said sharply, and Dwalin’s mouth clapped shut as if by a spell.

She was half a head shorter than Kili days, but in that moment she seemed taller, or filled with a strength that negated her size the way Thorin was when he spoke in the great hall. One of her hands came up and touched the stump of Fili’s severed braid and the other reached for the bruised, blood-specked ring around Kili’s neck. Kili swallowed, and Mama’s fingers shied away as if she’d been burned.

“Come this way,” she said coldly, waving her hand towards her tent. They went ahead of her in silence, neither meeting each other’s gaze. Mama took a brand from the fire and lit the ruddy glass lamp that sat by the tent’s entrance before she followed them in. She closed the flap behind her. Outside, the wind roared and made the walls shudder like a beaten drum.

“What happened?” she asked, putting the lamp down on her shelves. She stood away from them, her eyes dark in the flickering shadows. “Are either of you hurt?”

Fili shook his head. Kili remained motionless. 

“Tell me,” Mama said. 

Fili looked at his brother, but Kili was staring at the lamp. Fili cleared his throat. 

“We went exploring,” he rasped. “There were orcs.”

He told her the story in only a few words, playing down the danger as best he could. He finished with what Uncle had said about Kili’s father. Mama gave no sign until he had finished, and then moved towards her younger son. Kili flinched as she approached, and she stopped. His gaze pressed against her.

“It’s true, my love,” she said quietly. “I hoped you’d never have to know.”

Kili gave a hiccough as if something was stuck in his gullet and clutched at his chest. He bowed his head. “They hurt you,” he said, seeming to sway a little. 

“It was a long time ago.”

“You should have hated me,” Kili said in a voice barely louder than a whisper. “If I’d been there, I would have killed me the moment I was born.”

Fili looked sharply as Mama, but her face had become like polished stone. Her fingers curled into half-fists at her side. Kili lifted his eyes and looked at her, and read the truth from her. He made a sound that had no language, a sound of raw pain and grief, and stepped back, half-falling to sit on Mama’s bed. His arms wrapped around his chest, nails biting into his clothes, and he bent his head. 

Fili couldn’t stand it. He went to his brother and gripped his arm, glaring at his mother. “How could you do it?” he cried. “He was just born! He hadn’t done anything wrong!”

“I never asked for you to understand, Fili,” Mama said, her face still expressionless. “You couldn’t understand.”

“I understood better than you. I knew who he was. I wanted him when no one else did,” Fili spat back.

Mama closed her eyes and turned her head a little. “Go back to your tent. I will tell Dwalin you’ve been punished enough and warn him about the orcs. There’s no reason for them to bother us; and they have no pride to hunt you out.”

Fili pulled his brother to his feet. He came without a struggle. Mama reached for him as they passed, saying, “Kili—” but he slipped through her hands like water. 

In their small tent among the guards’ circle, Kili seemed to come to himself a little. An old pony-blanket formed a floor between their bedrolls and on it sat a jug from which he drank desperately. When it was empty he wiped his mouth and commented on the rising wind. 

“It might pull the pegs up,” he worried.

“I’ll go and set the guy ropes,” Fili agreed, and went out with a hammer to strengthen their shelter. When he came back inside, Kili was undressing and getting into bed. He’d folded his clothes and set his boots carefully in line by the door. He rolled over and lay on his side facing the wall of the tent. Fili sat on his own bed and began to unlace his own shoes.

“Do you remember, when you were little, Mama spent hours teaching you to speak without a lisp?” he said. Now that they were out of her sight, he was already feeling a long-familiar guilt at not being the perfect son. When Kili didn’t answer, he continued hopefully, “Thorin knows about everything, and he still calls you his second heir, he’s proud of you—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Kili cut him off. 

Fili got into bed and lay listening to the wind. He couldn’t hear much above it and certainly it covered any sound of his brother breathing, but he knew that Kili was lying awake too  
 **  
**  
  
There was an orc

( _once upon a time_ , echo the children between their sharp teeth, their black eyes wide and pupils blown in the firelight)

There was an evil lieutenant who made orcs kill their sons and warriors kill their shield-brothers so he could eat fresh flesh whenever he wanted

( _ooooh, ooooh!_ The children squeal, chewing their nails and rocking back on their crossed heels)

The chieftain knew he was evil, but the lieutenant whispered that only he was loyal, the loyal lieutenant, and only he could lead the summer raids. But there was a boy who watched the lieutenant for a long time, remembering his crimes. He was a very small boy, but he was hardy, and with a fist like a thunderbolt, and shoulders like a bull

(the children sit silent, mouths agape now, imagining that boy has their face)

The boy’s mother had been engaged to become the fourth wife of the chieftain, many years ago. But one day a wicked, slobbering dwarf had come down the road, saying he wanted to trade for gut-strings, which the mad dwarves use for their raucous fiddles. But he was an outcast of his own kind, and he saw the wife-to-be, and ruined her, and left her for dead. But she was an orc, and orcs are strong, and so she lived, though no one would touch her afterwards – ruined as she was. Soon she bore the boy with the bull’s shoulders and the fist like a thunderbolt. And she hated him, but still she fed him and clothed him, because she knew he would be the instrument of her revenge and be blessed with all the love and wealth that she had been denied. She taught him the ways of all things, of power and language and a warrior’s courage. And she died when the boy was young, but he worked hard and he was clever and one day

(the children lean forward, some humming to themselves)

One day he caught the evil lieutenant stealing the Chieftain’s gold, and he waited until the night before the summer raid and then he walked out of the warrior’s circle into the Chieftan’s fire-council and told his master what the evil lieutenant had done. And the evil lieutenant took up a longsword and attacked him to silence him. But the boy was stronger than he knew, and with only his bare hand he struck him here! And here! And here! And the boy killed him, with only his fists and his rage

(the children cry out and cling to each other, grinning between their thin lips)

Then they seized the boy for killing his superior and threatened to burn him alive and he said, “Look, take the key from around his neck, go to his tent and search in the box beneath his bed.” And there they found the Chieftain’s missing gold. And the Chieftain despaired and wailed, because he could trust no one, and it was time for the summer raids but he had none to lead beside him. And the boy said, “My chief, you can trust me.” And the Chieftain saw it was true, for the boy had risked death from all sides by exposing the evil lieutenant. And he made the boy his new lieutenant and sent him to lead the raids

(the children gasped and shook in their excitement)

And the lieutenant with the shoulders of a bull and the fists like thunderbolts was the greatest and fiercest raider his tribe had ever seen, and he took them to new hunting grounds far from where they knew, and found them riches and slaves sweeter and brighter than any they had seen before. And though he never grew tall he grew stronger, and had many wives. But he had no sons, just he had had no father. One day he saw that only the children of the captains were fed well and taught well and he said to the Chieftain, “Warriors come from high and low, as I did.” So the Chieftain took the new riches of his tribe and fed all the children well, and the lieutenant with the shoulders of a bull taught them to fight and plan and selected only the best to lead his warriors, even when they were not the sons of captains. And thus his tribe grew larger and stronger than ever

(and the children cheered and gnashed their teeth and clapped their hands)

And one day they were preparing for a raid. The newest and youngest warrior was the son of a serf and his slave-wife, but the lieutenant had seen great promise in him and chosen him for this battle. The young warrior came to the lieutenant and said to him, “I want to make you proud. I will make my first kill for you this summer, and give you the liver and the heart, to show I am loyal to you always.” And the lieutenant said to the boy, “You do not need to give me these; if it is your kill, you should eat them yourself and honour me by growing stronger. But if you wish to show your love for me, you should kill dwarves.”

“You should kill dwarves.”

And the raids went very well that summer, and the young warrior killed a dwarf twice his weight, and the lieutenant with the fists like thunderbolts saw that he had chosen his warriors well. He saw that his mother was avenged and his tribe were flourishing, and he said, “It is good.”

And it was good.  
 **  
**  
  
Kili got up as usual the next morning. He put on his clothes, tying a winter scarf around his throat to hide the bruises. He ate with the rest of the guards around the coals of last night’s fire. Both of them were barred from duty for the foreseeable future, but Kili gave no complaints while they completed the mundane chores Dwalin had set for them, helping the cook and repairing the few tents damaged in the wind the night before. Kili did not complain at all. Kili said nothing.

He picked at his evening meal that night and went to bed before the last of the miners coming off shift had even filled their bowls. The next morning he got up just the same, but when their chores ran out by noon, he went back to bed and lay there. Fili tried to convince him to come down to the river, just to sit and throw stones in the water if he didn’t feel like working, but Kili said he was too tired.

Fili grabbed his shoulder and shook him. “Stop stewing. It doesn’t matter any more. It’s not part of who you are!”

“Who I am,” Kili said dully, staring at the place where the walls of the tent closed in to make a dim, mouldy corner. “I am born from two generations of murderers and rapists. If I’d ended up in Uncle’s care, I’d have been the one stringing _you_ up by your neck.”

There was nothing Fili could say. He left the tent and went to help the labourers, stripping to the waist and lifting rocks until the sweat streamed down his arms and his back ached. 

Fili could not stop thinking about the Captain. It was that orc’s fault. If he had never killed Papa, then Papa would have saved their mother before the orcs got to her, Papa would have been Kili’s father, Papa would have raised them and disciplined them and not let them wander stupidly into gullies because they were idiots with no good dwarrow to knock their heads together. It made sense in Fili’s head – a simple twist in the universe, a heroic rescue, a kiss from Papa to calm his wife down and the world would be restored to its proper place. Kili would be just the same – a little shorter, a little fairer in the hair, a little less flighty, but still the same rude, cheery, loud, stupid, clever, wonderful, awful, irreplaceable brother that Fili could not live without. But none of _this_ would have happened. Their family wouldn’t be breaking apart _again_.

Fili hated the Captain. He hated him. He hated him so much he thought it would come out of his palms like fire. He hated him so much it paralysed him. He didn’t know what to do. 

Whatever Mama had said to Dwalin – not the truth, Fili was sure the truth would have spread if it had escaped – it had convinced Dwalin that Kili was unwell enough to be spared any more extra jobs for now. He agreed that the orcs were far enough away that they probably wouldn’t attack a well-guarded camp like theirs. Fili weakly hinted to Dwalin that perhaps the guardsmen could launch an assault on the orcs to head off any chance they would attack the camp. Dwalin told him not to be an idiot, and Fili thought guiltily of what Thorin had told him on the day they left home. Instead he doubled the watches, giving both brothers shifts that night one after the other. Kili went to his turn when Fili woke him and sat silent, shadows gathering under his eyes, staring into the darkness. He slipped back into the tent at the end of his watch and rolled over without saying a word.

The next morning he didn’t get up at all. Fili brought him breakfast, and he ate a few mouthfuls and put the rest aside. The sun crawled across the sky while he lay there. Sometimes he seemed to be sleeping. Sometimes he just lay with his eyes half-lidded, staring at the tent wall. One hand was wrapped around the orcish arrow, the pad of his thumb scraping at the flaked-obsidian tip, slowly wearing a groove into his own skin.

On the fourth day, Mama came to their tent. Fili saw her crossing the camp and followed her, but she didn’t tell him to leave when he knelt in the door of the tent to watch her. She sat beside Kili and touched his shoulder. 

“You must get up, my love,” she said. It was a command; she sounded like Thorin. “We need all the able bodies we can, especially now we know what’s in the woods.” 

Kili didn’t answer. He rolled further onto his stomach, pulling away from her. Mama leaned over him, taking hold of his hand and gripping it tight. “Fili was right. I didn’t know you when you were born,” she growled. “They had killed my husband, yes, and I wanted vengeance. And I’d have done almost anything to get your father–… to get Vili back. But I would not give up these fifty years with you. Not for a lifetime with him, not even to take back what they did to me. You hear? I would not give you up for anything.”

But Kili said nothing. Mama curled her body over him and kissed him like he was a small child again, rubbing her hand up and down his arm as if to ease a stubbed toe or scraped knee. But she was of Durin’s blood and soon her anger returned and she shook him and told him to get up, to be her Kili again. He pressed his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes closed and refused to answer. His breath came in tortured gasps. 

Mama stood up to give him space. She and Fili waited, looking through the door of the tent, until his brother relaxed and lay still again. The clouds above were heavy and blackening with rain. 

“Help him,” Fili begged Mama. 

She put her hand to her mouth and shook her head. This was not a broken arm she could hang in a sling, this was not an inappropriate joke she could silence with a scolding. The wrinkles grew deep between her brows and around her eyes, and Fili saw that she did not know what to do.  
 **  
**  
  
The next day one of the patrols was doing a wide sweep of mining sites for next year’s camp. Mama was among them, with her papers and her surveying equipment, noting the land and their route as they went. In the rocky feet of the mountains the team came across three butchered mountain trolls, a troll-women and her husbands, all mutilated and left to rot. The group returned quiet and grim-faced. Such creatures were difficult to kill, and the style of the raid together with a broken blade found at the scene confirmed the culprits. The orcs had seemed like an inconvenience, but now they were a threat; they must be larger in numbers and ambition than Fili had estimated.

They were still half a month from the autumnal equinox, but another sack of gemstones was not worth their lives. They spent the rest of that day closing the mining equipment and packing up the tents, planning to leave the very next day at dawn. When Fili told him the news, Kili got up and threw himself into the effort. Even Dwalin seemed relieved to see him marching about with his arms full of canvsa. Fili realised how glad his brother must be to return home to the Blue Mountains. Perhaps there his dark mood would lift. He’d heal, and smile again, and everything would be well.  
 **  
**  
  
That night Fili awoke to the sound of Kili undoing the ties of the tent. He assumed he was going out to relieve himself, but as the tent flap was folded back be saw the silhouette of his brother cut out against the sky. There was unmistakably the shape of his bow slung over his shoulder. Fili frowned.

"Where are you going?"

Kili turned his head back, but it was too dark for them to read each other's faces. 

"Hunting," Kili said simply.

There was a hoarse sting in his voice that Fili did not think he had ever heard before. He knew at once what Kili was going to do. He sat upright. "Wait, I'm coming with you."

Kili waited and did not say anything. He must have slept in his clothes, for he couldn't have dressed without waking Fili up. It took a few minutes for Fili to get himself together and find his boots. His sword lay by his pillow where he always kept it. They didn't speak as they slipped between the tents, stepping carefully on the grass as if this really was just an ordinary day hunting boar in the forests south of the Blue Mountains. They made it past the watchman by going low behind the big boulders on the riverbank; a notable blindspot in the perimeter, Fili thought, and wondered why Kili hadn't brought it to Dwalin's attention before now. 

"We'll only have a few hours of light," he warned. The quarter-moon was sinking towards the pines

"It'll be enough," said Kili, already setting a fast pace into the sparse forest.

"You know where we're going?"

"If they're still camped there," Kili said grimly. "That gully was just a rest stop. Uncle must have come from the home base. We know which direction the runners went in and we know about how long it took that old orc to walk there. And they sleep during the day. They'll have fires burning this time of night."

This was what had been inside him all this time, Fili realised. He had been planning this. But he hadn’t dared risk the orcs’ retaliation until he heard the miners were going home to safety. Then he must have known the time had come. Fili had never seen the look on his brother’s face before, but inside him the fire roared to life and he felt _glad_. Kili had the same idea as him – revenge for Papa, revenge for what the monsters had done. Kill the Captain. 

They found the camp after two hours steady jog. Kili was right on every point. He had always been the better hunter. Dwarves weren't trackers by nature (but orcs were, oh yes, just another little wrongness in the universe that Fili had never seen until now, a little twist that would have been repaired if Papa had lived). Fili felt hard stones begin to rise in his throat as the smell of smoke tinted the air and, very faintly, came the cackle of rough voices. Ahead was a shallow rise bare of trees. The gaping mouth of a high-roofed cave stood aglow like a lantern, its ceiling blackened by years of torches.

They didn’t say anything else as they spied the lone watchmen on the edge of the camp, swigging from a skin of something that – judging by the tight grip on his upright spear – was much stronger than water. There were several tall firs around the camp. Kili selected one without a word and they scaled it quickly. 

They roped themselves in. They waited. The orcs were celebrating the treasures from the troll-hoard, but the leaders were drinking deeper inside the cave. The night drew on. The moon sank. Fili nodded off once, twice, and was woken by an elbow in his ribs from his brother. Kili kept his bow in his hands the whole time, the black-feathered arrow standing prominently in his quiver. 

And then the cheering grew louder and the orcs emerged from the cave. The Captain stood tall and proud at their head. His arms were raised as he sauntered into the glow of the bonfire. His fellows were clapping. Uncle stood behind him, a twisted smile of affection on his face as he looked at his protégé. He had two young orcs as his retinue tonight who gazed at him in turn with palpable devotion.

“There,” Fili sat up on the thin branch and reached around the trunk to shake Kili’s shoulder. He pointed. “There’s the Captain! You’ve got a clear shot.”

“No,” Kili brought his bow around and slowly drew the orcish arrow from his quiver. But he did not yet nock it for his first kill, as if pausing to savour the moment that would plunge into his history and cut out the black rot that had festered there for fifty-three years. “He’s not my target.”

“What?” 

Kili rested the arrow against the bow and drew the string back with liquid grace. “He’s not the one who raped my mother.”

He released the arrow. It flew true, a calculated arc through the air, over the tongues of the bonfire and through the left eye of old Uncle. They were too far away to hear it hit home. But they heard the two young orcs begin to scream as the short, pale-skinned _balaak_ slumped sideways into the pine needles and lay shuddering. 

Kili was already unknotting their ropes and swinging his leg over the branch. They had the briefest moment before somebody realised what direction the arrow had not come from. Once again, they ran.  
 **  
**  
  
Someone must have seen them go after all, or perhaps they’d forgotten to close the tent and Dwalin had checked on them as he did his rounds. When they returned Mama was waiting with the watchmen, standing at the edge of the camp with the fire at her back. Kili walked towards her with his bow still in his hand and Fili beside him.

She held out her arms to him, and Kili let the bow fall into the grass and took hold of each of them. He bent his head to press his forehead to hers, closing his eyes for a moment as he drew in a ragged breath.

“It’s done, Mama,” he croaked. The watchmen were huddled around the flames nearby, but only Fili was close enough to overhear. “My Khuzdul name – _Dushâlzagith_. I knew it meant _vengeance_ but I didn’t understand it until now. It’s done.”

“No, my darling, my baby, my son, that was never why I named you,” Mama shook her head, their skulls still pressed close, and curled one hand around his neck where the bruises were now faint as smoke on the wind. Tears were pouring down her cheeks and Fili wondered distantly when was the last time he had seen her cry. Perhaps not since she had been in labour, fifty-three years ago. She swallowed around her ragged voice. “You _are_ my revenge. Every moment of you. You have been my revenge from the day you first smiled at me.” **  
**  
  
“I was his only child,” Kili said, on the long ride home. It was the first time they spoke about the night they ran away.

They were walking near the back of the group. It was a three week journey home, if the roads hadn’t been damaged by floods behind them during the spring. ‘Roads’ was probably a generous word for them anyway – they were trails, rarely wide enough for two ponies abreast. It made defence of the caravan difficult, which Dwalin had not been too concerned about on the way into the Ettenmoors but which worried him now. He had been holding everyone on edge with his constant reminders to keep their eyes on the forest and make sure their swords didn’t stick in the sheaths. It would be a long three weeks. 

“How do you know?” Fili asked quietly, after a moment. 

Kili looked up at something – it was a blackbird pecking at dogwood berries above their heads. His eyes squinted against the autumn sun coming sharp through the spare, brown leaves, and the bird dropped a seed down onto the path.

“He told me, in my ear,” he said at last. “He thought he was… like a mule, I suppose. He said he had wives and women and none of them had taken with his seed. I think that only made him more disgusted of me.”

“You don’t have to think about it anymore,” Fili said, and reached across to take hold of his younger brother’s hand, feeling the sweat of the road and the calluses of a long summer of guard duty. “It’ll go away with time.”

“Did it go away for you?” Kili asked. “You knew all these years.”

“It became part of the scenery,” Fili shrugged. “But – but I wish I’d told Mama, and we’d told you, when you were little and it wouldn’t have mattered, and by now you’d care as little as I do.”

Kili squeezed his fingers, looking down at his feet to step over a ditch across the path. “If we’re making impossible wishes, I’d go further and wish we were brothers all the way.”

“We _are_ ,” Fili said, and at last he saw what their mother must have known for a long time. “I don’t want you to be someone else.”

Kili turned his head and smiled, but he didn’t answer. **  
**  
  
Ered Luin was hung with blue shadows as the sun faded in the west. Thorin had taken Fili for a pipe on the balcony of the great hall after dinner. He wanted a report of the season from Fili’s throat, honest and clear. None of it would be new information, but Fili could see the twitch of a smile in Thorin’s mouth as he leaned his elbows on the railing. He was proud. He thought his nephews had done well on their first trip outside of home.

Dwalin – on Dis’ prompting again, no doubt – had downplayed or omitted entirely their disappearances. Fili realised at last that he must know the truth. He could never have lied to Thorin otherwise. He wondered how long Dwalin had known – a few days, or a few decades? Had Dis told him, late one night after too much wine with her babies in bed and the conversation flowing all-too-freely between them? Or had Thorin broken down, when Ered Luin’s future had still teetered on a knife-edge and his people had clamoured for him to save them, had he sobbed the truth to Dwalin that even Durin’s blood was now poisoned with a secret blight? Fili didn’t blame them either way. The grandchildren of Thror. He saw their imperfections now as he’d never seen them as a child; their fears and the shared blemishes of their family – stubbornness, constant self-sacrifice, ambition, anger, their endless habit of undervaluing their allies and overstretching themselves. Fili thought he’d like to talk to Dwalin about it, one day. When it was not so raw. 

He gave his report. He spoke with strength and confidence. He said nothing about the orcs that was not generally known. It was not his story to tell. 

“I see,” Thorin said when Fili was done. It was the closest he would ever come to ‘well done’. He drew on his pipe and, finding it empty, tapped out the ashes onto the flagstones. “Are you disappointed you didn’t make your first kill, then?”

Fili shook his head. In his mind, he was watching an old orc die, his brother’s father die, and a legacy die with it. A barbed-wire thread passed as an umbilical cord from mothers and as seed from fathers, a line of stepping-stones that were each an act as abhorrent as the last and stretching back who knew how far. Ended with a murder, the last of the first kills, a gift tied tight and returned to a mother waiting with open arms. 

Ended, he hoped. Ended, he _knew_ , as he’d known that first night when he picked a naked babe up off the floor to keep him safe.

“No,” he said. “You were right, Thorin. A warrior must know his purpose.” **  
**  



End file.
